Present Music presents

Neon Life

Friday, June 11, 2021 | 7:30 pm CST
Present Music Digital Stage

Program

David Lang: these broken wings (2007): III. learn to fly

Louis Andriessen: Life (2009): I. Wind

Daniel Kidane: Winged (2019)

Andriessen: Life: II. Couple

Tansy Davies: Neon (2004)

Andriessen: Life: III. In the Distance

Aviya Kopelman: Neon Lights (2013)

Andriessen: Life: IV. Light

Henry Threadgill, arr. David Bloom: Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (2015): Part IV (arr. 2021)

Sponsors

Present Music’s 2020-2021 Season, Limitless, is made possible with generous leadership support from the United Performing Arts Fund, the sponsorship of Saint John’s on the Lake, and grants from the Milwaukee Arts Board, the Milwaukee County Cultural, Artistic and Musical Programming Advisory Council, and the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Credits

Present Music

David Bloom and Eric Segnitz — Co-Artistic Directors

Jennifer Clippert — flutes
William Helmers — clarinets
Nicki Roman — saxophones
Don Sipe — trumpet
Carl Storniolo — percussion
John Orfe — piano and clavinet
Derek Johnson — electric guitar
Jeanyi Kim-Mandl — violin
Eric Segnitz — violin
Erin Pipal — viola
Adrien Zitoun — cello
Christian Dillingham — contrabass and electric bass
David Bloom — conductor

About the Music

David Lang: from these broken wings (2008): III. learn to fly

“I think it's important to remember that an artist could be at the center of healing our problems because, every day, that's what we do.” ― David Lang

learn to fly is the final movement from David Lang’s these broken wings, written for Eighth Blackbird. Lang says of the piece, “In this movement, I wanted to make a music that danced and pushed forward, in the hope that it would encourage the musicians to do so as well.”

Passionate, prolific, and complicated, composer David Lang embodies the restless spirit of invention. His catalogue is extensive, and his opera, orchestra, chamber and solo works are by turns ominous, ethereal, urgent, hypnotic, unsettling and very emotionally direct. Much of his work seeks to expand the definition of virtuosity in music — even the deceptively simple pieces can be fiendishly difficult to play and require incredible concentration by musicians and audiences alike. Lang is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, Musical America’s Composer of the Year, Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composer’s Chair, and the Rome Prize. Lang is co-founder and co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can.

Louis Andriessen: Life (2009)

“For more than twenty years I have enjoyed a strong friendship with the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Bang on a Can composers. Since then, the All-Stars have played the pieces of mine that are more or less suited for their instrumentation, and they have done so with brilliance and with so much commitment that I have walked around for at least ten years with the intention to compose especially for them. However, it took a long time to find a solution, because I found the combination of their instruments rather difficult: 19th century strings with contemporary instruments like guitar and percussion. I found a way when I decided to see this instrumentation as an advantage. This resulted in Life—four short compositions which combine late romantic ‘European’ music with hip ‘American’ repetitive music.” —Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen is widely regarded as the leading composer working in the Netherlands today and a central figure in the international new music scene. From a background of jazz and avant-garde composition, Andriessen has evolved a style employing elemental harmonic, melodic and rhythmic materials, heard in totally distinctive instrumentation. Andriessen’s compositions have attracted many leading exponents of contemporary music, including Asko|Schoenberg, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet, London Sinfonietta, and the Bang on a Can All Stars. Louis Andriessen has been awarded the Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall, Musical America’s Composer of the Year, the Grawemeyer Award, and the Kravis Prize.

Daniel Kidane: Winged (2019)

“I increasingly believe that ‘making it’ is finding the voice to fight for your art, even if you have to step on a few eggshells along the way. The sooner that gatekeepers realise we are all in this together and that we need to sort out our issues relating to equality and diversity now, the faster we can work toward other issues and stop allowing our collective culture to be trod on.” ― Daniel Kidane

Winged is inspired by starling murmurations, in which huge groups of starling birds twist, turn, swoop, and swirl across the sky in beautiful shape-shifting clouds. Just before dusk, small groups of starlings from the same area come together above a communal roosting site. The group grows ever larger, moving in unison in an aerial dance that casts gorgeous shapes against the waning daylight.

Daniel Kidane’s music has been performed extensively across the UK and abroad as well as being broadcast on BBC Radio 3, described by the Financial Times as “quietly impressive” and by The Times as “tautly constructed” and “vibrantly imagined.” His works have been performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Cheltenham Festival, Chineke! Orchestra, BBC Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras, Huddersfield Choral Society, London Symphony Orchestra. Kidane began his musical education at the age of eight when he started playing the violin. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music, St. Petersburg Conservatoire, Royal Northern College of Music, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Tansy Davies: Neon (2004)

“It’s all about attitude. I want musicians to have the confidence to swagger on stage and play like rock stars might. Generally I think my music has a robust quality; much of it involves an almost forensic level of detail, and when it goes exactly as it should it’s like rocket fuel for the moment.” ― Tansy Davies

Tansy Davies’s neon, a gritty collage of twisted modernist funk written for the Composers Ensemble, quickly became her calling card and continues to be performed internationally. She says of the work, “Neon consist of boxes. Each box contains a pattern or groove: some are bright and shiny, others dark and grimy. All of the boxes can be fitted together, the patterns are built to interlock with each other in numerous ways. This is just one way of putting the boxes together.”

Tansy Davies is a musician whose boundary crossing curiosity makes her one of the most distinctive voices in British music today. With a background as a horn player, electric guitarist and vocalist, her work is brilliantly imaginative and often gloriously offbeat, drawing inspiration from the Troubadours to Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Stevie Wonder. Her critically acclaimed first opera Between Worlds – a bold and highly individual response to the events of 9/11 to a libretto by Nick Drake – was premiered by English National Opera. Having previously taught at the Royal Academy of Music, London, Davies is currently an Associate Professor of Composition at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. She studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Royal Holloway.

Aviya Kopelman: Neon Lights (2013)

“Art may be entertaining, but entertainment is not art. I write music, so that when we meet, you and I, we are not strangers anymore.” — Aviya Kopelman

Neon Lights was written for Aviya Kopelman’s own ensemble, Turquoise Project, and draws on short quotations from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

Aviya Kopelman is a leading Israeli composer, born in Moscow, raised in Jerusalem and living in Tel-Aviv. Since 2014 she serves as the Composer-in-Residence of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. One of the youngest ever recipients of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Prize for Composition, Kopelman has written works for Kronos Quartet, Cremona Quartet, San Francisco Girls Chorus, and many ensembles in Israel. From the very beginning of her musical journey, Kopelman’s attention was focused on identity issues. Her works during the years addressed the subject from personal, social, national, historical, gender, aesthetic, and other perspectives, looking for the universal approach even in local and personal matters. She is the founder of the jazz-fusion ensemble Turquoise Project and has recorded an album of her songs, combining contemporary instrumental writing with alternative art-rock and collaborating with many non-classical musicians.

Henry Threadgill, arr. David Bloom: Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (2015): Part IV (arr. 2021)

“Music should go right through you, leave some of itself inside you, and take some of you with it when it leaves.” — Henry Threadgill

Henry Threadgill’s 2015 album Old Locks and Irregular Verbs concludes with an extended work that he composed as a tribute to cornetist and composer-conductor Butch Morris, who died in 2013. Morris and Threadgill were old friends and colleagues on the New York City jazz scene. Threadgill, a renowned saxophonist, formed a new band for the occasion named Ensemble Double Up, a septet in which he doesn't play but instead conducts.

When I heard the piece in 2018, I knew I wanted to play it. I wrote to Threadgill’s manager to ask how to get the music, and the next day I got a call from Henry Threadgill himself. He told me I’d be welcome to arrange the piece, and that I should create the arrangement from the recording instead of the score. In transcribing the piece as accurately as possible, I decided to capture the spirit of several improvised moments by asking players to improvise, instead of creating a verbatim transcription of Ensemble Double Up’s exact improvisations. This arrangement for Present Music is the second version of the work I’ve created, and it was such a thrill to play it with our ensemble! — David Bloom

Hailed by the New York Times as “perhaps the most important jazz composer of his generation,” Henry Threadgill has been celebrated for over forty years as one of the most original, forward-thinking composers and multi-instrumentalists in American music. His four-movement work, In for a Penny, In for a Pound, received the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2016, one of only three jazz compositions to ever be so honored. A Vietnam veteran, he returned home with two campaign ribbons following an injury in the Tet Offensive. Threadgill is an early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Aaron Copland Award, the Doris Duke Impact Award, and five Best Composer Awards from Down Beat magazine. He has released over thirty critically acclaimed albums and written works for Carnegie Hall, the New York Shakespeare Festival, Talujon Percussion Ensemble, the Biennale di Venezia, and the American Composers Orchestra, among many others.